meng

Catherine Meng

Two Poems

Future Pie

I never play “zipper” when I get a “Z” tile although I’m hopeful some day I might I am saddened that something so slight is all my hope is willing to attach to.                                      Drifting. Dreaming.  In the azure blue – the ‘Z’ tile conjures Ella the ‘Z’ alone conjures zebra & by proxy a herd of zonkey in Crow Canyon Elliot has been privy to. The zonkey is a mythical creature brought to life by cross-breeding until I can’t see the forest through the trees’ reality filtered through angles that have the distorted thickness of aquarium glass so there is little to gauge what appears to be surface relapsing my way until there is no distinction until the century happens concurrently between what is & was & wasn’t said & we are left in the damp warmth to find we have legs                                      flabby & weak but legs that connect to a joint in our chest                          also flabby & weak but a joint in our chest we press against & find it breathes. I scour to get nearer but end up washing clear through the internal particulars of an unstructured dove tilting the retelling until all its horses slosh over the side in as many colors as the news where I get high on the fumes of unregulated fuck-ups stand up quick to head rush followed by the neat-o making of dinner & my hands bound by the suds. Equating our future pie with the first bee sighting in the waning pre-full moon we gawk back at the squawk box pinning the blame on the texting conductor not the text, or the subtext, or the context, or the texture. I told the woman at Lenscrafters I wanted my sunglasses tinted as dark as Stevie Wonder’s. She paused as if about to break dishes & said, “Stevie Wonder is blind”. Socket Rot                                     Death wanted this mat.  This nerve.  This ritual. The red herring drove.             The season was part of the underbrush – the part where everyone goes on vacation.             He who registered his symbol            among the executive gaggle was iller than ill.          He who invented vitamin supplements                                                 was also part of the trilogy. And he who gets got by the illness makes it a tragedy       where he is the illest.              Until we all got ill.              Before, grass had discussed                                                 how place should go & what to do with the wander fluff.                          But these arrangements          went degenerate and made vacant of them.  So the place was run over by spores. While we were helping to invent stairs                                                 the concussives remained locked in a chamber.              How can so empirical an inspection             suffer from what even the random know? Until you are vitriol,    a long slug of it.                                                             When the bitter weakens just shy of sweet                          you celebrate the gears in your thumbs. Until the high-hat needs assertiveness training & the citizen exercise                                                 has landed winged – a brain.  No.  An amateur        has landed              between the world & where the gentlemen vibrate. Why else would so enormous             a wish volunteer?